The One With the Gerbil in the Skull
by grannysknitting
Summary: someone breaks into Baker Street. Not Good


Disclaimer – Characters and settings as depicted in the BBC series not mine. No money being made. Plot is mine.

Warning – established relationship (John/Sherlock). Random cute animal.

**The one with the Gerbil in the Skull**

They were on their way to the Yard when Mrs Hudson called John's phone. This was unusual enough in itself, but the level of distress in her voice had the hairs on his arms standing up and Sherlock scowling so ferociously the cabbie they had flagged pulled away before they could even get in. While John calmed their landlady and stayed on the line to ensure she was safe, Sherlock called Lestrade and had a team sent around.

John reflected that not even living with the only Consulting Detective in the world made you safe from burglars. It took some doing, but they finally got a cabbie that didn't mind scowling passengers to take them back to Baker Street. John was out before Sherlock and up the steps to Mrs Turners place, where Mrs Hudson had taken refuge once she realised there was someone who shouldn't be in Baker Street with her. Their landlady was pale but more angry than frightened and John took this as a good sign.

Reassured that she was ok, he headed into Baker Street himself, joining Sherlock on the landing outside their flat as the crime scene people went through the process of collecting fingerprints and fibres from the intruders. The first officers to respond – they'd been suspiciously quick, which led John to wonder if Mycroft's surveillance was more active than he'd thought – had already cleared the scene and John thanked them as they went back to their beats.

Sherlock moved to stand behind John, wrapping his arms around his waist and holding on tightly. As much as the detective clearly wished to be in there, he knew that the crime scene people needed access to do their jobs. The official evidence they collected now would allow the prosecution of the people that Sherlock would later catch. It had taken awhile, but Sherlock had finally learnt that the Yard's tedious processes had their uses.

"How would they even know they'd been burgled?" one of the techs muttered as she dusted the coffee table for friction ridges. She had a point. The flat was its usual post-case disaster, but not even Sherlock threw files and books around like _that_.

The most worrying thing that John could see immediately was the destruction of the palatial habitat that Sherlock had insisted on buying for Houdini. Sherlock's pet had been in the habitat when they left to take the final evidence from their latest case to the Yard this morning. They'd been waylaid by Sherlock's insistence on feeding John breakfast as neither of them had gone shopping in the last week and there was no human food in the flat. Sherlock had decided that feeding John and Houdini on a regular basis was Important, hence the side trip to a café.

The habitat was lying on the floor, the bright plastic smashed and crushed. The fragments of Sherlock's scarf that had been ruined by an acid spill and donated to Houdini were threaded through the wreckage from where the gerbil had dragged it like a snake through his tunnels. Sherlock had spent hours watching him do it, a faint grin on his face the entire time. Now the home was smashed and Houdini was nowhere in sight.

The crime scene people were walking very carefully, obviously wary of standing on the pet that had escaped, which John was thankful for. He didn't want to see Houdini hurt, nor Sherlock attempt murder if someone accidently stood on the little rodent. The pattern of mess in the room clearly spoke of the burglars trail through the front room, though some parts of the room, such as the mantelpiece had been left untouched. Sherlock would probably be able to tell John exactly what had happened and why but John wouldn't ask. Sherlock was too upset to enjoy showing off at the moment.

The front door opened without ceremony and John felt Sherlock twist to see who it was.

"Lestrade," Sherlock muttered and John turned to look too. The DI was looking more harassed than usual, probably because he was worried about the evidence that Sherlock and John had been about to deliver.

"Tell me they didn't get the evidence," Lestrade confirmed John's not-quite-a-deduction in a slightly panicked voice. Sherlock let go of John long enough to fish around in his jacket and pull out the thumb drive which had been the target of the break-in. Lestrade took it with a sigh of relief and slipped it into his own pocket.

"Nothing missing?" Lestrade asked and Sherlock tensed against John's back. John rubbed his thumb over the hands clasped on his waist and was rewarded with a slight release of tension. His partner wouldn't relax until the flat was theirs once more and Houdini located, but giving comfort was as automatic as breathing to John and accepting it had become automatic with Sherlock after quite a lot of practice and some very determined ambushes on John's part.

"Houdini isn't visible," John replied, sensing his partners' reluctance to answer, "Once the SOCCO team clears out we'll have a proper look. They've smashed my laptop, but the telly is still there."

"I wouldn't bother stealing your telly either," Lestrade offered a cheeky grin, "But I'm sorry to hear about the laptop. As for Houdini, he'll turn up. He's not stupid – he probably hid when they broke in."

John appreciated the kind words, even if Sherlock sniffed in a dismissive manner. Lestrade spoke with the leader of the SOCCO team and then tipped a quick salute to John, clattering down the stairs and heading back to the Yard. They both knew there was no point in wasting words on Sherlock at the moment, who only had attention for the flat and his missing gerbil.

Twenty minutes later the SOCCO people were clearing out, leaving John with a case number and a pamphlet for victims. Sherlock was inside in a flash so John left him to it, going instead to fetch Mrs Hudson from next door, escorting her back to her own flat and checking the doors and windows carefully. He left her making tea while fuming at the rudeness of others and planning dinner for the three of them as 'you'll have enough to do without cooking for him upstairs as well, dearie'. John enjoyed Mrs Hudson's dinners and so kept his protests to the minimum.

On his way to the stairs there was a knock on the front door, which disclosed upon opening a pair of delivery men with a Victorian age filing cabinet and a delivery order from M Holmes. John signed their paperwork and directed them up the stairs, ensuring the cabinet and its file boxes were set up in the corner near the window.

"He couldn't have stopped the burglary in the first place, could he?" John muttered as the men left. He found it hard to be grateful when Sherlock was picking carefully through the wreckage of the gerbil habitat for clues with a faintly distressed look on his face. Sherlock didn't even respond.

John sighed and began gathering papers. It took hours to put everything into the right pile, starting by year, then month then date. Once that was done it was well into the afternoon and there was still the books of clippings and collected journal articles that littered the room ordinarily to deal with. After some thought, those went on top of the old rosewood cabinet in piles organised by type. The whole process was made harder by Sherlock's insistence on crawling around the flat looking for Houdini in every nook and cranny he could find. John found him under the couch, the tables and crawling along the skirting boards in an effort to locate his lost pet.

Dinner came and went with Sherlock so restless he was barely able to manage more than a few mouthfuls and Mrs Hudson tsking sympathetically over Houdini's plight.

The consulting detective retreated to his armchair as John continued to put things away, the flat cleaner and more organised than it had ever been as he worked on the disturbed clutter. The laptop was beyond repair but he put it to one side in the hope that some of the hard drive could be salvaged, though what he'd do with the retrieved data he didn't know. A new laptop was out of his budget.

Nine pm saw the appearance of tea and the ultimate Sherlock-comfort food: hobnobs. The tea was ignored but the hobnobs disappeared slowly as John put the book cases to rights. He left a hobnob next to the skull – one of the only things the burglars hadn't disturbed – and moved on to the kitchen which had some breakages from the rummaging in the cabinets.

By the time the flat was clean Sherlock had fallen asleep in his armchair, huddled in a ball, an upset frown on his face. John sighed and turned to the skull, nudging the hobnob closer. There was a definite stirring inside the eye holes so he left the hobnob where it was and went to sit in his own armchair with a back issue of the National Geographic. Twenty minutes later Houdini crept from the left eye hole and attacked the hobnob hungrily. John smiled and let him eat in peace, waiting until Houdini sniffed in Sherlock's direction to stand up and move slowly towards the mantelpiece.

Houdini allowed John to pick him up, sniffing the palm of his hand avidly. John ran a hand through tousled curls, waiting until Sherlock stirred before placing the gerbil on Sherlock's chest.

Sherlock's sigh of relief was more than enough to dispute the diagnosis of sociopath.

**END**

AN – ok so it wasn't that much of a mystery where Houdini was, so sue me :DS


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